Tom Sr. helped him climb out of the tank.
“B-b-brand my rhubarb rockets,” Chow stuttered. “What in tarnation happened?”
“Guess I gunned my new skin-diving jet a bit too hard,” Tom said sheepishly.
“It was almost a K.O. for me!”
Mr. Swift asked Tom about the invention. After explaining how it worked, Tom added with a grin, “Maybe you’d better hang around, Dad, until I install some sort of density-control gadget for my hydrolung. Then I can go up or down, or stay at any level easily.”
Such a device, Tom felt, might prove to be a lifesaver if he should ever become trapped under water-perhaps far from help.
The elder scientist chuckled and threw an arm around Tom’s shoulders. “I’d say you could design something like that with your eyes shut, son!”
Warmed by his father’s appreciation, Tom set to work improving his diving apparatus.
An hour later Bud came bursting into the laboratory. “Hey! What’s this I hear about your getting hammerlocked by a water jet?” the husky young pilot asked.
He had been on a test flight and just returned.
68 THE ELECTRONIC HYDROLUNG
Tom laughed good-naturedly. “Nothing serious. In fact, I felt pretty silly,” he told his chum. “I souped up our ion-drive gizmo a bit too much.”
Bud picked up the slender metal cylindrical assembly from the workbench.
“This it?” he asked, his curiosity immediately aroused.
Tom nodded and demonstrated the device in the test tank.
Bud whistled with glee. “Boy! With this rig, we can scoot around like a pair of barracudas!” he exclaimed. “What about that other thing you’re working on?” Bud pointed to a small electronic chassis on the workbench, studded with a tangle of transistors, diodes, and condensers.